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Mortars rock Aleppo as foreign help steps up

A Free Syrian Army rebel opens fire from his machine gun in a clash with Syrian Army forces

Reuters: Zain Karam

Rebels have unleashed barrages of mortar fire against troops in the battleground city of Aleppo, as Washington unveiled new funding for humanitarian aid and the civilian opposition.

Residents of neighbourhoods previously spared the worst of the two-month-old battle for the northern city said the violence was unprecedented.

"The sound from the fighting... has been non-stop," a resident of the central district of Sulamaniyeh, who identified himself as Ziad, said.

"Everyone is terrified. I have never heard anything like this before."

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said: "The fighting is unprecedented and has not stopped since Thursday."

"The clashes used to be limited to one or two blocks of a district, but now the fighting is on several fronts."

Rebels claimed they had advanced on several fronts, particularly in the southwest, but admitted they had failed to make any significant breakthrough.

"On the Salaheddin front, we took one of the regular army bases," Abu Furat, one of the leaders of the Al-Tawhid Brigade said.

To win a guerrilla street war, you have to have bombs and we don't

Abu Furat

But he admitted the fighters had to retreat from Salaheddin because they were outgunned.

"To win a guerrilla street war, you have to have bombs and we don't," he said.

Mr Furat said 25 soldiers were killed in the assault, while another rebel fighter said 20 of his comrades died on the battlefield and 60 were wounded.

Violence also continued to rage in Damascus where troops attacked several rebel areas in both the north and the south of the capital, leaving three civilians dead, the Observatory said.

While on the northern border with Turkey, a Syrian shell crashed into a town on the Turkish side, wounding a Turkish national, a local official said.

The Observatory which gave initial estimates of 65 people killed across the country on Friday - half of them civilians - said at least five civilians and five rebels died in Aleppo.

Aid boost

In New York, United States secretary of state Hillary Clinton unveiled a total of $45 million in new funding for humanitarian aid and to help the civilian opposition in Syria.

Some $30 million will go towards aid, bumping up the total US funding for humanitarian relief to $130 million with a further $15 million for the civilian Syrian opposition, she told a meeting of the Friends of Syria.

The UN Human Rights Council, meanwhile, announced that renowned former war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte is to join a UN probe into rights abuses during the conflict in Syria.

"The situation on the ground has shown no signs of improvement," council president Laura Dupuy Lasserre said at a meeting in Geneva.

"I would like to recommend the Commission of Inquiry be strengthened with the appointment of two additional commissioners: Carla Del Ponte and Vitit Muntarbhorn."

Both Ms Del Ponte and Mr Muntarbhorn had "a long track record" and were "recognised at the highest level internationally," Ms Lasserre said.

"I hope they will contribute to carrying out the mandate entrusted to them."

The announcement came after the UN rights assembly voted overwhelmingly to an extension of the probe into rights violations in Syria, condemning the "increasing number of massacres" in the country after 18 months of bloodshed.

In Washington, US defence secretary Leon Panetta said the Syrian regime has moved some chemical weapons to safeguard the material but the main storage sites for its arsenal remain secure.

"There has been some intelligence that with regards to some of these sites there has been some movement... in order for the Syrians to better secure the chemicals," Mr Panetta said.

"We still believe, based on what we know and what we're monitoring, that the principal sites remain secure," he said.